


Nice and Warm

by Twice_before_Friday



Series: October? No, I think you mean Whumptober [21]
Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, Hypothermia, Nightmares, Panic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:21:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27133792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twice_before_Friday/pseuds/Twice_before_Friday
Summary: Prompt No 21. I DON’T FEEL SO WELLChronic Pain |Hypothermia| InfectionAnd so he straps himself in every night in an effort to keep himself alive and unscathed come morning. Unfortunately, those efforts don't always pay off.Sometimes, the restraints fail.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell
Series: October? No, I think you mean Whumptober [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947595
Comments: 20
Kudos: 79
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Nice and Warm

Malcolm is well aware he possesses a casual disregard for his own safety. It's not that he _wants_ to hurt himself, per se, it's just that, more often than not, there are more important things to consider. If he happens to get injured while saving someone's life or while pursuing a criminal in order to see justice served, he'll consider it a worthy sacrifice and happily accept whatever comes his way.

Simply put, his drive to help others — his almost obsessive need to counter the scales of good and evil that his father tilted so cruelly — is prioritized higher than his own well-being.

The one exception, the one time that he truly is more concerned for his own safety than anything else, is when he sleeps.

The restraints he uses at night are primarily for self-preservation. Sure, it's to keep him from going Psycho with a kitchen knife on any overnight guests he may have over, too, but that's only ever happened once (and it scared the hell out of him; enough to consider never sleeping with anyone ever again). But injuring _himself_ in the throes of a night terror has happened more times than he can count.

And so he straps himself in every night in an effort to keep himself alive and unscathed come morning. Unfortunately, those efforts don't always pay off. 

Sometimes, the restraints fail.

Tossing himself out the window was one such occasion. He was lucky the single restraint that remained attached to his wall held firm and supported his body weight that time, but the experience frightened him more than he'd care to admit. If he hadn't been strapped in or if the other strap had broken free of the wall, he could have died, or worse, been injured so severely that he never would have been able to work again.

And so he had a company come out and add steel reinforcements to his wall to hook up his restraints, ensuring that what happened that day never happens again.

It's all he can do, really. But he knows he can't account for every possibility.

Like dislocating both of his thumbs and slipping free of the cuffs in the middle of a night terror. 

The pain blends seamlessly into the hellscape he's trapped in and doesn't even come close to waking him up, not even when he launches himself from his bed and fumbles with the door knob with rapidly swelling hands.

The cold concrete on his bare feet doesn't register either. His body is in fight or flight mode and his mind — deep asleep and in a state of severe panic – has chosen flight.

In his dream, he's running from his father, from the gory mess of bloodied bodies that he'd been stacking in the corner of the cabin, making room for a live victim, one he saved especially for Malcolm. Martin had gotten as far as guiding Malcolm's small hand, wrapped tight around a familiar knife, to the body on the floor before Malcolm ran, his feet pounding the dirt of the forest floor as Martin yelled after him, "You'll be back, my boy! We're the same!"

And so he runs and he runs from the terror in his mind, unaware of the cuts that he collects on his bare feet in the real world. Unaware of the cars that slam on their brakes and swerve around him as he darts through traffic. Unaware of the way his skin prickles in the below-freezing temperatures that New York has on offer right now. 

He runs until his lungs burn with the cold air he's sucking in and his legs shake and his body threatens to give out altogether. And then, when he can't possibly run anymore, he hides. Like he did when he was a child, he finds a thicket of trees and he cowers in the dirt with his hands wrapped around his knees as they pull tight to his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut and hopes with every ounce of his being, down to the marrow of his bones, that his father won't find him.

He doesn't know how long he stays hidden, but it's long enough that the nightmare begins to slowly fade away, draining the last dregs of the adrenaline along with it. So when a uniformed police officer finds him some time later and lays a hand on his shoulder, he's calmed down enough that he doesn't even try to fight the unexpected threat.

Not that he could even if he wanted to. By the time he blinks his eyes open at the officer's touch, he's nearly frozen in place. The sweat that soaked through his clothes while he was running has long since wicked away, taking the last of his body heat along with it and freezing his damp t-shirt into stiff folds that scratch against his skin and crackle when he tries to move.

And moving doesn't come easily. His muscles feel nearly as stiff as his shirt and can't seem to obey his command to release, to stir, to fucking do _something_.

"Sir?" the officer says with a tone that suggests it isn't the first time he's tried to gain his attention.

"Hmmm?" Malcolm attempts to respond but his lips are frozen together and tug painfully when he tries to speak. 

His mind feels sluggish and foggy but even still, he knows something is wrong. Knows he shouldn't be here, shouldn't feel the way he does. He finally manages to look up, into the bright light of the officer's flashlight.

"Shit," the man says, "You're that profiler that works with Major Crimes, yeah?"

Malcolm is pretty sure he nods, though he may have just dropped his head because it's too damn heavy to hold up and he's exhausted enough not to try anymore.

The next thing he knows, he's being laid out on a stretcher, too many hands touching him and maneuvering him against his will, and it somehow leaves him impossibly colder as he's uncurled from around himself. He'd be embarrassed about the pitiful whimper that falls from his lips, but all at once there's a blinding heat on his chest and his groin and it feels like he's burning but the hands just hold him down when he tries to push the fire away. He's aware of being covered by a blanket and then he's strapped down and can't move much at all and his hands are trapped by his sides, but what felt like fire only seconds ago suddenly feels warm and wonderful and forces his mind to realize how fucking cold his body truly is.

By the time he's being loaded in the ambulance, he's teeth are chattering with how hard he's shivering and the part of his mind that isn't encased in a fathomless fog recognizes that this is probably a good thing, but he honestly just feels like he's never going to be warm again and nearly cries at the thought that hell truly is made of ice, not fire.

The ambulance ride passes surprisingly quickly and soon he's in a nice warm hospital with nice warm blankets covering his body and nice warm saline being pumped into his veins, though he's thankful for his partially numbed extremities as the doctor resets his thumbs and cleans and bandages his feet.

He's just about to drift off when a familiar voice causes his eyes to flutter open.

"Can we maybe get through one month without you ending up in the hospital?" There's a smirk on Dani's face but Malcolm doesn't need to be a profiler to read the concern beneath the words.

"It's not every month," Malcolm smiles softly. "What are you doing here?"

It's just after four in the morning, and Dani is in a pair of worn jeans and an oversized sweater, a puffy jacket folded over her arms. Even without any makeup and her hair tugged back with a jumbo clip, she's still beautiful.

"It _is_ every month," she teases and moves into the small, curtained-off room, taking the seat beside the bed, "and Mike called me." 

Malcolm's eyebrows draw together, trying to work out who Mike is and why he called. Dani notices his confusion and elaborates before he has a chance to ask.

"Officer Anderson. He's the one that found you," she says as she reaches out and lays a hand over his forearm where it's buried beneath layers of blankets. "He's an old friend and called me when he recognized you from a crime scene he worked with us a couple months ago."

Malcolm makes a mental note to send the man a fine bottle of whiskey once he's warmed up enough to use his hands.

"He said you were in rough shape, hiding in Central Park in just sweats and a t-shirt," Dani's eyebrows pull together at the thought but she pushes on. "It's like twenty degrees outside, what were you doing?"

Malcolm huffs out an embarrassed laugh. Dani learned first hand of his night terrors the first case they worked together, but that doesn't make it any easier to confess what happened. Fortunately, she seems to figure it out on her own without him having to explain.

"Right. Night terrors," she nods once and then bites her lip. "Is there anything I can do to help?" 

He's pretty sure there's nothing anyone can do to help, but it means the world to him that she offered.

"I'll be fine," Malcolm says around a massive yawn. "Sorry. As you can imagine, I didn't get much sleep."

She hums her agreement before settling back in her chair and saying, "Why don't you sleep for a bit? I'll stand guard. Keep you from doing a runner."

The words are a joke, he knows, but the sentiment is true. He can tell she means it. And the funny thing is, he trusts that she'll keep him from getting hurt.

His restraints may have failed him, but Dani never has.

And so he closes his eyes with a quiet, "Thank you," and lets sleep claim him, knowing she'll keep him safe.

Even from himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, KateSamantha, for checking these little bite-sized morsels for me!


End file.
